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July 03, 2013

(+++) BACK THEN

Written in Stone. By Rosanne
Parry. Random House. $16.99.

Every Day After. By Laura
Golden. Delacorte Press. $15.99.

There is a subgenre of the
coming-of-age genre for preteens and young teenagers in which the authors
explore not modern-day coming-of-age issues but ones that applied in the past, often
in locales and circumstances with which modern young readers are unlikely to be
familiar. That is the subgenre into which these two novels fit. The general
idea, here as in many similar books, is to bring a touch of the exotic to
stories that will be emotionally recognizable to the young readers of today in many
of their issues, if not in their specific situations. Rosanne Parry’s focus in Written in Stone is the Pacific
Northwest in the 1920s, and specifically the effects of events of that time on
Native Americans. This is a story of whaling, but it is quite unlike Moby-Dick in its focus and emphasis. Like
a great many novels in this subgenre, it paints an idealized picture of the
life of “outside” groups such as Native Americans, showing them as close to
Nature and living in harmony with their surroundings, while the evil characters
– generally in the persons of white Europeans – are disturbing Nature’s balance
and will pay in some way at some time, if not necessarily within the book
itself. The 13-year-old protagonist here is Pearl, whose dream of hunting
whales as her father did – taking them one at a time, expressing gratitude to
them for giving their lives for the life of the Makah tribe – has been
shattered. Her father has been lost on a hunt, and the whales themselves have
pulled back from traditional hunting areas because those places are now filled
with steam-powered ships whose harpoon cannons harvest multiple whales, doing so with great power but without
gratitude. It falls to Pearl to seek ways to preserve the culture of the Makah,
the skills and the stories, while others seek to rebuild the tribe’s way of
life now that the whales are gone. As usual in these books, little attempt is
made to present the dialogue in the language of the times – that would make the
story harder to follow – but references are made time and again to feelings and
beliefs of the time in which the book is set. For example, when Pearl’s
relatives talk of making masks and carvings to sell to keep the family going,
Pearl reacts with horror: “I could not believe what I was hearing. They would
let a stranger come in and buy things, ceremonial things?” She reacts with
childlike wonder and enjoyment to elements of the natural world, such as
porpoises being fed by her grandma: “It was impossible not to laugh at their
chubby, frowning faces.” And she shows contempt for the arrogant white men who
fail to understand and appreciate Makah life, such as a certain Mr. Glen, who
is interested in artifacts and claims, because of his work in photography, that
he, like the mask makers, is an artist: “That was the whopper of all lies. Mr.
Glen had the artistic sense of a banana slug.” Eventually, and not without
heartache, Pearl finds methods of keeping the old ways alive and vital, and she
ends up, as often for the protagonists of these novels, sadder and wiser. Readers
are of course supposed to identify and empathize with the “good” Native
American culture and revile what is more likely to be their own – a pitfall of
all books like this, but one that tends to evaporate in light of the
sensitivity with which the story is told.

The first novel by Laura
Golden is sensitive, too. The old-time setting here is quite different: it is
the Depression, and Every Day After
takes place in Alabama, where 11-year-old Lizzie’s family has, like so many
others, been hit hard by the collapse of the economy. The town where the book
takes place has the apt name of Bittersweet, for that is the feeling of the
book itself, from start to finish. Lizzie’s once-supportive family has
shattered, her father leaving to search for work and her mother spiraling into
sadness so profound that she cannot take care of herself, much less the
household – so the work falls to Lizzie, who is also dealing with her own
preteen issues, which include (typically for a book like this) a bratty rival
at school who has taken over Lizzie’s position as the top student and has also
muscled in on Lizzie’s relationship with her best friend, Ben. Lizzie’s rival,
Erin, turns out to have major issues of her own, and the book builds to a
climax in which Lizzie not only has to sell something precious to her to make
it possible to keep their house, but also has to hear Erin’s secret and then do
her best to make Erin, if not a friend, at least no longer a hated opponent. “I
know it’s hard to trust people, but I guess we have to try, or else we’ll end
up alone,” Lizzie tells Erin in the climactic scene, and trusting people, which
includes being willing to ask for help, is much of what the book is about –
with Lizzie growing up in the course of it but really being wise beyond her
years throughout. There is no formulaic happy ending here, but there is a
not-unexpected conclusion in which Lizzie, despite all the adversity, is able
to help her mother, finds that she has grown significantly and even understands
why her father had to leave, and at the last is able to reconcile the painful
lessons of the story with the necessities of life. The poor economy of recent
years may make it easier for some young readers to relate to what goes on in Every Day After, even though the depth
of the Depression is beyond what any young person today has encountered. Lizzie’s
pluck and steadfastness, her ability to see the best in others – or at least
try to – and her overall niceness
combine to make her an attractive central character, if scarcely a surprising
one: what flaws she has are so obviously minor that she stands head and shoulders
above everyone else here, including the other good people. This is not a
particularly original book in its story arc, and tales of the Depression have
often been told before – for all age groups – but Golden does manage to convey
some sense of rural life in that difficult time, and readers who are close to
Lizzie’s age will find her a strong and interesting character.